That earthy smell of growth hit me again shortly outside of Museumtown’s walls.

  I was ready for it this time, and instead of losing my focus to thoughts of my sister, I fired up the Bio-Electric Scanner and stared into the canyon that led to Cindy’s Automotive.

  Bramble and brush had already choked it again, the sharp-bladed leaves covering even the path I’d hacked out earlier that day. “That’s going to be a problem,” I muttered.

  “What is?” Tori asked. “The plants?”

  “Yeah. Down south, they’ve got kudzu in their fields. If they don’t stay on top of it, it’ll choke a farm to death in no time flat.” I sighed and hefted the Trip-Hammer. “I need a path to Cindy’s, and we’ll need to keep an area around Museumtown clear.”

  “So, are we doing that now?”

  “No. Right now, we’re exploring, trying to see what’s different in the newly-grafted world, and figuring out why a graft is Phase Two of Integration and what the Waypoints are. We don’t know what’s out there in Chicago, and the two of us are the strongest people in Museumtown. We’re the front line. The tip of the spear, as Calvin would probably say. And I want to know more about the orcs.”

  “Right. So, through the mess?”

  I nodded. “Through the mess.”

  We started pushing through the tangle of brambles and razor-leafed plants. Tori’s Push and Pull spells worked wonders for bending branches back, and as we walked, she formed a tunnel of smooth, leaf-free wood around us. She was multi-casting, too. Before one spell could fade, another started, keeping the passage open for long enough that we could maintain a solid walking pace.

  With her doing all the work, I kept my focus on the Bio-Electric Scanner; we’d only been walking for a minute, but a cluster of glowing orange dots had already formed directly ahead of us.

  “That was fast.” I readied the Trip-Hammer in case they were more hostile than the half-naked Orc Harvester had been, and Tori kept Pushing and Pulling the bramble. It felt like we were walking into a trap. No. Like we’d walked into a trap and then, after it sprung, kept right on walking.

  I didn’t care. We needed to know what was out there, and if we couldn’t handle it, Museumtown was screwed.

  The dots hurried toward us, glowing brighter and separating into five individuals. I waited until they were about a hundred yards out, then told Tori to stop moving. I sat on the smooth dirt and waited. Tori did, too. But her shoulders were tense, and she looked ready to cast a spell.

  “Let me handle it,” I whispered as the first orc pushed through the brush.

  Orc Warbringer: Level Sixty-Five Monster (Rank One)

  He was big. The harvester had been taller than me, but this one’s chest was taller than my head, and his shoulders were broad enough that they wouldn’t fit into the tunnel Tori was maintaining. His weapon was crude but solid, and I doubted I’d be able to shred the long spear like I had the Enforcer’s axe outside the Field Museum.

  And he wasn’t alone, either. His four allies were a little smaller, but not much, and they each carried similar spears.

  Orc Warrior: Level Sixty Monster (Rank One)

  “I expected more axes,” Tori whispered. She was wound up and trying to hide it, but failing. Her body language reminded me of the moments on the subway before she told me she’d picked the Hardcore Tutorial. Had that really been less than four weeks ago?

  “Easy, Tori.” I put a hand on her shoulder and stood up. The Trip-Hammer hung from my left hand as I stuck my right out and gave the orc a Midwestern farmer’s smile. “Hi. Hal Riley. Do you have any idea what’s—?”

  As the Orc Warbringer’s howl echoed off the canyon walls around us and the Trip-Hammer roared to life, I thought through what had gone wrong. I already knew exactly what I was doing first, so I had a second to think.

  The Orc Harvester. That had been the start of it. She hadn’t attacked. Almost every monster I’d encountered up to that point in Integration had attacked first and asked questions never. In fact, I couldn’t think of a single enemy—with the exception of the impossible to kill ‘boss’ on the Seared Wilds Tower’s first floor—that didn’t go hostile instantly. So when the Orc Harvester had watched and left, it had made me think the orcs might not be all that bad as neighbors.

  And I’d tried the ‘honest Midwestern farmboy’ schtick before. It had worked before. Diplomacy wasn’t a bad idea; it just hadn’t been the move here. I’d missed something—some part of the puzzle—and without it, my solution was wrong.

  Stolen story; please report.

  My first move wasn’t, though.

  The Trip-Hammer roared upward, knocking the massive orc’s spear aside, and I threw myself the other way. The spear tip slammed into the packed earth next to where I’d been standing, punching almost a foot in. The Warbringer’s leather shoulder armor took three Trip-Hammer hits. Leather straps popped and fasteners gave as the spiked hammers ripped its armor apart and gouged bloody tears in its gray-green flesh.

  Tori started casting something as the Warriors entered the fight. The Gravity Well jerked them off their feet and into a pile. She followed it up with a Pull—or at least, it looked like one. All four flew into the air, where they hovered for a few seconds. “Hurry it up, Hal!” she said through gritted teeth. “Levitation takes a lot to maintain.”

  The spear flew toward my head again, and I ducked. This time, the Trip-Hammer was already at full speed, and it crashed into the weapon’s haft. The wood shook in the massive orc’s grip, but it didn’t snap—and he didn’t let go. I needed him disarmed, and that wasn’t going to happen.

  We traded blows for a few moments. The spear caught my calf muscle and punched clean through it, then sliced even more on the way out. I’d just about destroyed the orc’s shoulder; it hung from its socket uselessly, held in place by a few straps and a thin band of tendons and muscles. Blood covered the bramble. Neither of us was winning this.

  And his dark eyes locked on Tori.

  I wasn’t fast enough to keep him off her, and she couldn’t do enough to defend herself—not while she had the warriors controlled. Her face was pale, and she couldn’t stop shaking. I couldn’t use Stasis, either; I didn’t have the Spellcode Scroll-Reader equipped, and even if I had, it would just free the other orcs.

  “Tori, drop them! Elite us both!” I shouted.

  She nodded. The Queen’s Blessing flashed twice, and my leg stitched itself together as I gained five temporary levels of Body, Awareness, and Charge.

  Elite - This Delver moves faster and hits harder than a similarly powerful Delver (Sixteen Seconds Remaining)

  At the same moment, all four orcs hit the ground, and the Warbringer rushed Tori.

  I didn’t have time to worry about her. If she, fully buffed, couldn’t handle the Warbringer, we were both screwed.

  Instead, I rushed the four Warriors. The Trip-Hammer went up, then it came down, slamming through the first orc’s attempt to block it with his spear. The haft shattered. So did the orc’s ribcage, and blood erupted from his mouth as the hammer crushed bones and its spikes shredded the monster’s organs.

  A blood-red experience orb appeared, but the monster didn’t vanish. Monster experience was almost always Minecraft experience-green, and the bodies always vanished.

  I grabbed the experience and whirled to block as a spear tip rocketed toward my face.

  Level Up! Sixty-One to Sixty-Two.

  There were still three more orcs to beat before I could help Tori, much less figure out what was so different about these new monsters. I lifted the hammer again and swung it into the next orc’s side.

  Thirty seconds later, five very dead orcs lay inside the shrunken pocket of bramble, and both our injuries were healing up as a point of Body stitched wounds back together. Tori winced as her wrist cracked and popped back into place. “So, that went well.”

  I ignored her the best I could; the last thing I needed to do was get into it with a teenager. “Why do you think the bodies didn’t disappear?”

  “Well, Leana’s didn’t, and neither did Tommy’s, right? People’s bodies don’t always vanish. So maybe we’re not looking at the same kind of monster from Phase One. Maybe these are aliens from Nebulon Eight or whatever the planet’s name was.”

  “Hmmmm.” The experience orbs had all been blood-red, too. That had only happened when I fought other humans. “So, these are people from the other grafted world? They seem…”

  “Boring? Basic? Technologically behind us in every way?” Tori asked.

  I’d been about to say ‘needlessly hostile,’ but I nodded. “Let’s keep moving. We’ll head up to the river, try climbing the cliff, and see what we can see from up there. Maybe the path to the Seared Wilds Tower is open, and we can get a good view of the city from there.”

  I pulled the biggest orc’s spear into my inventory and started walking.

  The Bio-Electric Scanner kept picking up monsters, but never more than one or two in a group, and when we ran into them, they were Concrete Falcons or swarms of Knife Crabs—nothing so much as Tier One. They were so easy to kill that I relaxed a little. That last fight had been hard enough that there were only four people in Museumtown—five, if Bobby was around—that could have survived it.

  Nothing the two of us did could change that, though. It was up to Calvin to decide how best to get Delvers levels, and up to the Delvers themselves to put in the effort. Hopefully, a few more were getting close to breaking into Rank One.

  Spray from the waterfall drenched my clothes, and the roaring, thundering sound of pounding water echoed off the canyon walls as we drew closer. I couldn’t help but stare at the water—and at the bridge that arched across the river just below the cascade. It was shrouded in mist, but it looked…familiar.

  “Is that…?” Tori asked.

  I crept closer to the bridge, and I nodded. It was steel and asphalt, the metal a faded red so light it was almost pink. Its guardrails reverse-arched elegantly over the greenish water, and two stone abutments capped its ends. The bramble-covered dirt gave way to concrete and asphalt about twenty yards from the bridge on either side, and half a skyscraper stuck out from the sandstone cliff overhead, like they’d both been in the same spot at the same time.

  Tori pointed. “Looks like a buggy game.”

  It did. My ex had played a game a couple of years ago that was notorious for having characters fall halfway through the floor and keep on walking. She hated it, but couldn’t stop playing to see what the next bug was.That’s exactly what it looked like here; the building had fallen into the wall, but was still a perfectly intact building. “It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. They use the same machines to cut different puzzles, so you can put two puzzles together all mixed up,” I said. “That’s what’s happening here.”

  “Why do you know about jigsaw puzzles?” Tori asked.

  “Because I figured it out in seventh grade. I’ve built puzzles like that.”

  “Really?”

  ‘Yes. The winters in Nebraska can be pretty boring, and we didn’t have much else to do besides work on machines, take care of the pigs, and work puzzles.” I shouldered the Trip-Hammer and headed for the bridge—and for the monsters I was sure were waiting in ambush. “Come on, Tori. Let’s hunt some orcs.”